Saturday, February 27, 2021

dälek - Absence (2004)


Previously on OPIUM HUM:

My favorite dälek record, and definitely in my hip-hop top 10. Impenetrably dense, shoegaze-like walls of noise, monstrous beats, and bleak, extremely pissed-off flows. One of the only rap records that's made me do the invisible pineapple. 

Track listing:
1. Distorted Prose
2. Asylum (Permanent Underclass)
3. Culture for Dollars
4. Absence
5. A Beast Caged
6. Koner
7. In Midst of Struggle
8. Eyes to Form Shadows
9. Ever Somber
10. Opiate the Masses


11 comments:

  1. Fantastic album. What's your hip hop top-10 btw?

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    1. Hell on Earth by Mobb Deep is probably my #1, and Doggystyle is my #2. Outside of those (and Absence): Fear of a Black Planet, Illmatic, Aquemini, Ill Communication, Hell Hath No Fury, It's Dark and Hell Is Hot, and AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted are probably involved, but I don't think I can rank them. (I'm not claiming that these are The Greatest Hip-Hop Records Ever Made, just my personal favorites.)

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  2. Inquiring readers want to know what "the invisible pineapple" is. Thanks for the music!

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    1. It's when something is super metal so you make a claw with your hand, palm up, that kinda looks like you're holding an invisible pineapple. AKA the invisible orange. Like this: https://i.imgur.com/t4D2au0.jpg

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    2. hahaha that's awesome! thanks for everything you do :)

      \m/

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  3. Yesssss love dälek! Nice choice D_S. Been quite a while but I used to have a great fckn time mixing dälek (especially) with Meat Beat Manifesto, the classic material such as 99%, Radio Babylon/remixes, NOW, etc.. Something sublime always with these sick clangorous tracks meshing on my technics 1210s ;-)

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    Replies
    1. Fuck yeah, you're speaking my language, that sounds amazing!

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  4. Back when this was released and customers would ask me about it at the record store I worked at, I would say it sounded like James Plotkin, Public Enemy and Rakim if they made a album together.
    -Britt

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  5. Absence is an amazingly heavy rap album and my favorite thing ever by Dälek. I know some people have compared the sound of this album to shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine's album "Loveless". I like that album but it doesn't sound like that to me. To me a lot of it reminds me of the guitar sound on the Godflesh - Streetcleaner album. So I've always thought of Absence as kind of a rap version of how heavy that Godflesh album sounds to me.

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